Shinji and Warhammer40K/YMMV

• Better Than Canon: It definitely explores the social and economic effects of Second Impact more deeply than canon...even using them to deal with some of the Zeerust inherited from its parent.
• Complete Monster: Considering he's the Dark Messiah, it's no surprise that Kaworu fits this. He really doesn't show it until chapter 22 when he plunges his fingers into a little girl's head and levels a facility of psychics in Russia.
• Crazy Awesome:
  • The fic starts out pretty placid, with just a few moments of awesome and a bit of crazy in the prologue, then steadily increases both. By ch. 19, when canon!Eva has pretty much been left by the wayside, there's so much of both that it rivals Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann at times.
  • Shinji gets an especially large dose. Multiple personalities inspired by toy soldiers are keeping him functional.
• Crowning Music of Awesome: Moments after Shinji proclaims, at the end of chapter one, that he will pilot the Evangelion for the first time, the author tells the reader to cue the theme song to Neon Genesis Evangelion. ...If one continues to do this at the end of each succeeding chapter, the effect might soon become overwhelming.
  • Actually, "Cruel Angel's Thesis" does seem to fit more with this fic than with the original series, urging with the words, "Young boy, become a legend." The original Shinji was not very legendary. This Shinji, however...
• Fanon: More than a few reviewers of the work on This Very Wiki have commented on it almost replacing the theoretically "correct" version of events, in their minds.
• Fridge Logic - Invoken by Bpen, in one of the author notes: How exactly does The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya still exist in a world where the Neon Genesis Evangelion anime was never made and thus (for example) the Emotionless Girl trope would never have been established? Not to mention that it would've been written after Second Impact.
• God Mode Sue: Bpen's made it clear that he's trying to avoid this; thus, while Shinji has additional powers (and more importantly, a backbone), he is still beatable, makes plenty of mistakes, and finds romance difficult. More importantly, of all the other Chessmasters in the story, he's the only who does not want to become a god, and is growing more and more disenchanted with his power. Whether or not Bpen's succeeded (and whether or not it really matters) is up to the reader.
  • Subverted at least a couple of times, such as the transition into the Javaal arc. Shinji has somehow gained the ability to psychically manufacture antimatter as a weapon, the power to crack the planet if he wanted to, and near invulnerable toughness...but since this outward expression of power keeps him from synching with his Eva, he spends the entire arc trying to get rid of it.
• High Octane Nightmare Fuel:
  • The Angelspawn and the Black Moon's Zombie Plague.
  • Iruel emits a tone that's the literal form of this trope.
  • Makoto, while reading The Melancholy Of..., reaches the obvious conclusion and proceeds to freak out for a little while.
• Holy Shit Quotient: So obvious that if you've read the main page and your jaw isn't firmly planted on the ground, you're either dead, or have become totally inoculated to the idea that there's nothing Shinji isn't capable of at least trying.
• Les Yay:
  • The End of Evangelion indicated that Maya was in love with Ritsuko, when Ritsuko's image makes her drop her AT-field. This series takes it Up to Eleven...or should we say...40,000.
  • And those massages Rei gives Maya could just be friendly...
  • Mayumi has a serious girlcrush on Asuka...and even gets in on the massage action herself.
  • Rei lays this on thick around Asuka, partly because she's serious and partly for her own amusement at Asuka's reactions (see Double Entendre and Noodle Incident).
  • No mentions of Ritsuko and Misato yet? Granted, it's only early on, but "I will find you and I will strap you down to a bed like we did in college and this time you won't enjoy it!"...
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Shinji, who eventually gets Gendo fired and imprisoned by punching himself in the face.

"Gendo was left alone, blinking, wondering...What the hell just happened?"

"I am Jack's smirking revenge." Directly lifted...and only adding to his brilliance.

• • A few chapters later, Fuyutsuki invokes the trope by name when Gendo returns to power.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Pilot Sohryu, I am charging your laser."
  • "Halt!...Hammerzeit!"
  • All Your Base reference in Uncertain space part 4.
  • "Dropping armament buildings meant left open shafts, not to mention the gaping hole left by the Ashino Lance Cannon. Obvious points of vulnerability were obvious."
  • "What is this I don't even."
• Jump the Shark - There's no doubt (at least from comments in this wiki) that the trope dropping, Shout Outs, and/or increasingly over-the-top nature of the story has caused some readers to hit this wall. For others, it's long since Jumped It Twice, and entered the realm of junkfood fic.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Gendo executes the second Rei after she learns how to use her AT-field offensively outside of her Eva.
  • Kaworu is a sympathetic character up to the point he stabs Rei and helps Iruel turn the Earth's Cradle, the self-sufficient, fortified final bastion of humanity, into grade-A, militarized High Octane Nightmare Fuel.
• OT3: Tenchi Solutions and Biker Babes aside, plenty of women crave Shinji; Rei and Asuka complete him. Probably.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Dare we say most of the cast?
• "Stop Having Fun!" Guys
  • Averted with Admiral Yang, who used to play a D&D campaign with his military advisors, and with Rei, as she basically discovers the concept of fun when Shinji gives her a copy of the Ork codex, as well as finding the time to write a movie.
  • Played straight with Shinji, who realizes that this isn't one of his games or flights of fancy, and tends to take everything dead seriously.
• Tear Jerker: Rei's death at the hands of Yui!Lilith in ch. 44 and Shinji's utter loss of composure afterwards.
• Thirty-Sue Pileup: A strange case in that the pileup is contained in Shinji, who embodies a lot of different Sue sub-types. Because of this, some see this fic as one of the crowning examples of why Tropes Are Not Bad, while others find the fic intolerable because of this.
• Ugly Cute: The Trident Land Dreadnought ^{[dead link]} is an unsubtle walking tank covered with weapons and slabs of heavy armor. It also tends to waddle around with its arms waving and is only waist-high to an Eva, leading Misato to describe it as "like a deranged, homicidal puppy."
• Wangst:
  • Happily averted as early as the prologue.

Shinji: What am I doing? This is so worthlessly dramatic. I'm brooding. Brooding, damn it!

• • And possibly just as happily reacquired, for at-last-decent reasons, with his concerns that he might be destroying entire other universes through his exploits.